Holiday cards hold season's greetings for everyone

Dec. 12, 2012
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La'Don Walker peruses holiday greeting cards at the Ninth Street Book Shop in Wilmington, Del. on Dec. 6, 2012. Christmas tops the list for card-sending holidays in the U.S. (followed by Valentine's Day and Mother's Day), according to an annual survey by the Greeting Card Association. / Gannett, Andre L. Smith/The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

by By Margie Fishman, Wilmington (Del.) News Journal

by By Margie Fishman, Wilmington (Del.) News Journal

Colleen Vivarina doesn't do "Happy Holidays." She won't wish it on a card or in person.

Vivarina, of Wilmington, Del., grew up celebrating Christmas. That's what she knows. This time of year, she sends out "Merry Christmas" cards to people of all faiths.

"It's our religion and our beliefs and that's what we share," she explains.

Christmas tops the list for card-sending holidays in the United States, followed by Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, according to an annual survey by the Greeting Card Association. Roughly 1.6 billion Christmas cards will be purchased this year, and that's not including all those free e-cards whose blaring jingles make it perfectly clear to all your colleagues that you are not working.

Another recent survey conducted for Staples found that three of four Americans send winter holiday cards, with women twice as likely as men to include personal notes. More than two-thirds of respondents admitted to sending belated holiday cards.

As poet Richard Armour once wrote: "You cannot reach perfection, though you try however hard to, there's always one more friend or so you should have sent a card to."

Or said "Season's Greetings" to. Or said "Joyful Kwanzaa" to. Or said "Merry Mythmas" to (for the atheist in your life).

Which begs the question: Are religious cards shoving faith down your throat or are nondenominational cards watering down the holidays under the guise of tolerance?

Is there really a Golden Rule of Yule?

The Greeting Card Association survey doesn't weigh in on the topic, except to say that the usage of "Merry Christmas" is still prominent, along with "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings."

"If you say 'Merry Christmas,' people are offended. If you say 'Happy Holidays,' people are offended," says Barbara Crane, co-owner of Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Crane and her staff handpick the nearly 2,000 patterns of holiday cards they sell. Beachy themes, such as Santa sunning himself in a bathing suit, are crowd favorites.

In recent years, Crane has noticed people getting "less huffy" about the actual sentiments in the cards.

"That's the beginning of accepting everybody for who they are," she contends.

Still, etiquette experts agree that bland messaging is preferable for mass holiday card mailings. On Thursday, the White House released its 2012 holiday card, featuring the family's black-and-white Portuguese water dog, Bo, prancing in the snow in keeping with the "Joy to All" theme.

Bo also took center stage last year, curling up next to a hearth, in a card that made no mention of Christmas. At the time, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin slammed the card for emphasizing a dog rather than "family, faith and freedom."

At Mod Cottage, a gift store also in Rehoboth, snowy landscape scenes dominated by owls are a hit.

That market belongs to Andy Meehan, whose greeting card brand Christian Inspirations, can be found in about 1,000 stores selling Christian merchandise worldwide.

Gone are the days when neighborhood children sold boxed cards door-to-door depicting the Virgin Mary, notes Meehan, who is based in Exton, Pa., and bought the Christian card brand from a group of Jewish businessmen.

Meehan maintains there is still an appetite for boxed cards declaring "Jesus is the reason for the season," or featuring a kitten peeking out of a bin of candy canes attached to a psalm.

"We don't have any cards with Santa or reindeer on them," he says. "Those are 20th-century inventions that have come to mean Christmas but they aren't in the traditional sense of celebrating Christmas."

In a cluttered digital world where a "Happy Birthday" note posted on a Facebook wall is the equivalent of "meaningless background noise," sending a physical card makes you stand out, Meehan says.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of people who use Someecards.com to send free e-cards during the holiday season.

"There are plenty of people who are still into sincerity," says site co-founder Duncan Mitchell.

But they are not in Someecards' target demographic. Catering primarily to 18- to 34-year-olds, the site mentions Jesus in a card poking fun at bored Jewish people during Christmas: "Let's celebrate the birth of Jesus by going out for Chinese food."

Spoiler alert: Another top seller is an illustration of Santa on the phone, saying "I don't exist."

Someecards.com also sells boxed cards in stores like Target and Urban Outfitters. "We certainly are not trying to be sacrilegious," Mitchell adds.

Today, sacrilegious is a blurry concept, anyway, with jokes about "Festivus" and "Chrismukkah" lighting up little and big screens. At Wilmington's Ninth Street Book Shop, which only sells recycled paper greetings, funny holiday messages win out over romantic or spiritual ones, according to co-owner Gemma Buckley.

While good will toward men might be a unifying thread this holiday season, it's clear that a small gesture of good will won't please everyone.

Statistics show that more than one-third of Americans have a spouse of a different faith. That has prompted certain websites like MixedBlessing.com to market mixed holiday messages, like a picture of Santa juggling a menorah, dreidel, ornament and Christmas wreath.

Others, like CafePress.com, devote an entire section to atheist cards, including a "Jesus" fish cradling a martini.

"I try not to say 'Merry Christmas' to people because I am Jewish," says Nina Hubbert, a receptionist at Congregation Beth Shalom in Wilmington.